


Of Notices, Ditches, and Pinky Promises

by Purple_Slippers_18



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Season 3/Episode 2, just as Marilla always feared, season three spoilers, take notices, there will be ditches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 12:15:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purple_Slippers_18/pseuds/Purple_Slippers_18
Summary: Against Marilla's wishes, Anne goes back to Charlottetown, with every intention of completing her deeply personal quest to find the truth about her heritage. All she has to do is avoid one Gilbert Blythe on the train and it was smooth sailing.Too bad none of Anne's schemes ever went exactly as she imagined them.





	Of Notices, Ditches, and Pinky Promises

Anne felt her body relax the moment the train pulled out of Bright River Station.

It had been difficult boarding without being noticed, so much so that she’d resorted to tying her red hair back into a single braid and tucking it under her coat collar, the cursed titian tresses sure to give her away to any sharp-eyed Avonlea local who would inevitably wonder why the Cuthbert girl was boarding the train by herself and no Marilla or Mathew in sight.

The last thing Anne wanted was for word to get back to Marilla that she was on the train. It would make the days she’d spent convincing the more-cantankerous-than-usual woman to allow her to accompany the Barrys to Carmody for the weekend all for naught.

Because the Barrys really had gone away to Carmody, making Anne’s inclusion on their weekend getaway the perfect guise for her true destination.

She was going to Charlottetown, and from there, Nova Scotia.

She would disembark at Port Howe and hitch a ride on a towboat to Bolingbrook. Then, she’d scour every church in and around the little village for records of her parents. Maybe she’d be lucky enough to come across someone who knew them, someone who might see the spirit of her mother in her grey-green eyes, or the impish grace of her father in her red hair. She’d find the truth of whether they had died from fever or if they’d simply not loved her enough to keep her. She might even find out that her birth was unplanned, or that she wasn’t baptized, or that she was a bastard. Or she could learn that she had a vast inheritance, or long-lost siblings, or that she was indeed loved beyond all measure by Walter and Bertha Shirley, just as she’d always imagined.

But whatever she did find, Anne was determined that it would be something.

Tapping her satchel and feeling the comforting weight of the items she’d tucked away in the worn leather, Anne made her way through the train car, looking for a place to sit.

And then she spotted him.

Feeling the tension return to her shoulders and neck, Anne forgot to breathe as she watched Gilbert Blythe take a seat just a few rows in front of her. She’d known Gilbert was an obstacle she’d have to evade when she’d concocted her scheme, as he did take the Saturday train every week. It was why she’d been late to the train, having to hide inside the station rather than idle on the platform, waiting for Gilbert to board first before following. In fact, Anne had been particular in boarding a car that Gilbert had not, so why he should suddenly be only feet in front of her really must be some cosmic joke.

Bristling, Anne turned away immediately and hoped she’d be able to scurry off to the next car before he spotted her.

“Anne?”

Drat! He’d noticed her. Of course, he did.

Steeling her nerve and putting on her best causal expression, Anne turned around and made her way back to Gilbert. He stood as she approached and nodded at her with a small smile before indicating that she was welcome to sit across from him.

“Thank you,” she said, resigned to spend the next hour in the young man’s company.

Not that it would be much of a chore to do so. Anne really did like talking to her classmate. She especially enjoyed their debates, and knew he thrived as much as she did in their school rivalry, the extra lessons and newspaper stoking their motivation to learn and outdo one another in grades, articles, and praise from Ms. Stacy. Of course, there were times when Anne could be bullheaded, and Gilbert insufferably smug, but they always managed to overcome those hurdles in due time.

“Lovely weather today,” Gilbert said, awkwardly attempting to start a conversation. In fact, when looking back on their past interactions, Anne couldn’t remember them ever once discussing something so dry as the weather. It was odd.

“Um, yes?” Anne replied, looking out the window to the cloudless sky, unable to think of anything else to add.

“And…I meant to ask, what did you think about the pastor’s sermon?”

“From last week?” Anne asked, eyes going wide with perplexity. “I…honestly, I don’t even remember what the sermon was about. Was it something interesting? What were your thoughts about it?”

“My thoughts? Um, well I…didn’t really have any,” the eighteen-year old confessed, sounding just as confused as Anne felt. “I didn’t see the Cuthberts on the platform,” he said, still a bit stilted in his speech.

“No, they weren’t there,” Anne admitted, realizing she’d have to tell Gilbert, at least in part, of what she was up to. “I convinced them to let me make the journey to Charlottetown on my own.”

“Really?” Gilbert said, his skepticism showing in his smirk, and suddenly, the Gilbert Blythe she knew was back in true form.

“Yes,” she countered, leaving no room for discussion.

“So, what’s bringing you to Charlottetown today, Miss Shirley-Cuthbert?”

“I told you last week: a deeply meaningful and personal journey.”

“I thought you’d accomplished everything already,” he said, and Anne remembered that she hadn’t given Gilbert any details of what she had, or rather hadn’t, found at the orphanage. In fact, they’d made the return trip from Charlottetown in total silence, Anne lost to her tumultuous musings and Gilbert fiddling with a purple crocus the whole ride.

“Well, the orphanage didn’t have what I was looking for,” she said, the truth that her records had been gnawed to shreds by rats still upsetting enough to make her throat tight.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Gilbert replied, and Anne believed him. After all, while she was finding herself more and more confused by Gilbert Blythe, one thing Anne knew she could rely on was that he was genuine. “Where will you look next?”

“I’m hoping a church might have some record of the Shirleys.”

“So back to Nova Scotia, then. Are you going with Cole?” Gilbert asked.

“Yes!” Anne lied easily. She had no intention of including Cole on this second attempt at her quest. While having him with her at the asylum was comforting, she hated that there had been a witness to her weakness. Her search was simply too personal for companionship, she realized, but Gilbert didn’t need to know that. She was fairly sure if she did tell him, he’d jump off the train and hightail it back to Green Gables and tattle on her to Marilla. Or worse, he’d insist on coming with her. “He is helping me in my quest, after all,” she elaborated.

“Oh. Of course,” Gilbert said, strangely curt. “Well, it’s good you’ve _someone_ helping you.”

He reached into his satchel for one of the biology texts he was so often absorbed in, opening the thick book to a dog-eared page on molecules, and had every intention of not speaking to Anne for the length of the ride, just as he had last Saturday. Seeing the way his mouth pinched and brow creased had Anne flustered with guilt, and she knew she had to make amends with the boy across from her.

“Gilbert I’m –”

“It’s fine,” he interrupted, just like before. Where the Anne of last Saturday had huffed an accepted his stubborn ignoring of her, the Anne of today would have none of it.

“It’s not fine!” she hissed, leaning over to lay her hands on the pages of his book. The action startled Gilbert into looking up at her, his face twisted with confusion, but tucked away in the corners of his hazel eyes, Anne could see the shade of an emotion she hadn’t seen on the young man since the day they quarrelled at his father’s funeral.

Gilbert was hurt, and Anne was the one who’d hurt him.

“Gilbert, you need to let me apologize,” she said.

“I thought you didn’t need me to do anything,” he countered, throwing her own words back at her like the stinging barbs they were.

“Alright then,” she said, “I’d like you to let me apologize. And don’t say it’s water under the bridge, and don’t contradict me, and don’t say it’s fine!”

She looked into his eyes, inviting him to look into her own, to see her sincerity, and vulnerability, and her shame. It seemed so often that just when they were starting to feel like real friends, Anne would do something to bring them back to the pair of squabbling schoolmates who had tugged on pigtails and smacked offenders with slates. She didn’t want them to be like that and knew that they didn’t have to be. Anne just needed to be brave – true brave – and open her heart up to the boy in front of her. All Gilbert had to do was listen.

Gilbert didn’t speak for a long while, keeping his eyes locked with Anne’s. He could tell she would not relent, and that he would hurt her egregiously if he refused to even consider her apology. And much as she had hurt him over the last few weeks, Gilbert didn’t really have it in his heart to truly hurt her back.

He pulled his book away from Anne’s hands, closed the text and placed it back in his satchel before leaning back and nodding his permission for her continue. Anne’s whole body sagged in relief and she even smiled at him before straightening her posture, hands placed primly on her knees as she surged forward.

“I’m sorry for what I said to you last week, about not needing you. I was only trying to say I didn’t need an escort to take the train or walk me to Aunt Josephine’s. To be completely honest, I absolutely detest the idea of escorting altogether. We’re supposed to be preparing for adulthood, and when we’re at Queens next year we will be expected to be self-reliant, and yet because I’m a girl, I’m restricted. I’m treated as if I can’t take a train without getting into some kind of trouble, starvation and ditch diving included.”

At the reminder of Marilla’s overzealous warnings before they’d departed for Charlottetown last week, Gilbert did chuckle, and his lovely smile made Anne feel both at ease and on edge.

“Marilla’s cultivated quite the imagination since you’ve come along, Anne,” he complimented.

“She was insufferable!” Anne groaned, briefly covering her face with her hands as if that might rub away the memory. “And since we’re on the subject, that was another reason I was so cross that day. She was outright embarrassing. I’ve never seen Marilla behave that way, and to act that way in front of you –” Anne cut herself off, afraid she might reveal too much of her heart if she let her thought continue. She only wanted to apologize for being rude, not confess that she worried over his opinion of her, and how that might have changed when he’d witnessed her being babied.

“I know what you mean,” Gilbert said, his blithe demeanor returning. “My dad used to pat down my hair all the time. Outside the church before service, walking through town, at every social function, he’d make a production out of licking his fingers and trying to get my hair to stay put. The more people around to see, the more joy he got doing it.”

“Why are parents like this?” Anne groused, but she was laughing, and so was Gilbert. It was refreshing to know that the embarrassing habits of parents was a universal experience.

“I haven’t a clue,” he confessed. “You know, it used to drive me crazy, and I think he knew it – probably why he kept doing it, even in the end…”

And suddenly, Gilbert’s jovial manner was gone. His hazel eyes went dull, their mirth quashed in the wake of something that Anne assumed was the remembrance of his father’s passing, but when a tear was blinked free to tumble down his cheek, Anne realized that there was something wrong.

“Gilbert?” she asked gently, sliding forward in her seat so that their knees began to bump together as the train bustled down the track. “What’s happened?”

And with a shaky breath to brace himself, Gilbert told Anne everything about Elijah. He told her how betrayed Mary felt, how her health was seeming to suffer from the cruel actions of her son, how Bash was feeling both angry and helpless, how the lovely little family they’d spent a year-and-a-half building had been flipped upside down, and how every precious token he’d had of his father’s was now lost.

“Everything?” Anne asked when Gilbert finished his woeful tale.

“Everything,” he confirmed, sniffing. “All of dad’s medals from the army, a coin collection, a knife he was presented after the Zulu War, his evening hat…Elijah took it all.”

“That’s terrible,” Anne said in sympathy. “All those treasures…”

“The worst part is, I had no idea how much they meant to me until they were gone,” Gilbert said. “They were valuable, and I’m sure Elijah’s been able to hock almost everything for a pretty penny, but I didn’t realize how much more sentimental worth I’d put into everything that used to belong to my dad. But it feels like…it’s as if he’s really gone from me now. I have nothing left that’s his. Nothing I can touch, or look at…Anne?”

He reached out to her then, laying his fingers, bare and warm, on top of her hands still clasped over her knees. The touch sent an electric wave through Anne that she felt speed from the tips of her fingers to her very heart, which began a rapid dance in her chest. On instinct, she wanted to move away, free her hands from his grasp, but he was giving her _that look_ again, the one Ruby informed her was full of romance.

Only there was so much more than romance in his eyes.

There was compassion, and sadness, and understanding. The copper flecks seemed to glow with kindness, and the little shadows of green were awash in sincerity, and the piercing dots of gold were absolutely effervescent with yearning.

In all of her novels, the hero’s eyes were described as dark ethereal pools of mystery and passion when looking upon the woman he loved. But looking into Gilbert’s eyes, Anne realized that romance, true, startling, and unconditional, was as bright as the sun. Gilbert’s eyes were glowing, and they were glowing for her.

She wondered if hers were glowing for him.

It certainly felt like it, and because she thought she very much might be half in love with the boy sitting across from her, Anne found her courage and slipped one of her hands out from under Gilbert’s and placed it on top of his.

His skin was warm, his nails neatly trimmed, and fingers indented with callouses from farm work and papercuts from studying. When she gave his hand a squeeze, Gilbert seemed to sigh at the contact, lips lifting in the littlest of smiles.

There were a few stealing glances in their direction, some of the other passengers muttering over the inappropriateness of the youths’ handholding so publicly, and one of the porters broke into a judgemental coughing fit upon glancing at the two. Gilbert watched Anne, seeking any sign of discomfort, or shame, but she seemed immune to the scene they were creating, keeping her sage green eyes trained on him.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” he said, gutturally. “A locket, a letter, a handkerchief, anything. I hope you find a treasure chest of heirlooms from your parents. I know how much it means to hold something palatable, something they’ve touched…I know.”

“I think,” Anne sighed, squeezing her eyes closed in the hopes of quelling the tears burning to be released, “you may very well be the only person in the world who does.”

Gilbert’s heart swelled, enthralled with the connection Anne had just acknowledged existed between them. Though they did banter, and had made mistakes (and would continue to do so), and threw unfair accusations at one another, Anne and Gilbert always managed to find their way back together, better for their trials and tribulations, having learned more about each other and offering another inch of their true selves for the other to see.

Maybe it was time to show Anne the one part of himself he’d been trying to unveil for quite awhile.

Daringly, Gilbert moved one of his hands and raised it up, slowly bringing it closer to Anne’s face. He meant to cup her cheek, feel it heat with delight against his palm, perhaps brush away the tears collecting on her lower lashes. Then, if Anne seemed agreeable, he might caress her freckles with his knuckles and confess everything that had been building up in his heart since the day she slapped him with her slate. She might smile then, might grace him with a confession of her own, or brush her lips against his wrist, or maybe even his palm. The only way to know was to reach out and touch her.

“Ahem!”

The crisp cough, delivered by one very stern looking mother in a seat on the other side of the aisle who was glaring daggers at the two adolescents all the while pressing her young daughter’s face tight against her side, reminded Gilbert of just where he and Anne were.

On a very public train headed for Charlottetown.

If there was going to be an exposing of hearts’ desires, this was certainly not the place for it. Blushing, Gilbert shifted away from Anne, taking his hands with him. Anne, for her part, laughed at the situation, both in genuine amusement and raw relief. She wasn’t so certain she was ready to acknowledge her feelings for Gilbert to Gilbert just yet, but it was freeing to know that the boy very much did have some sort of affection for her. When she was ready to confess at last, Anne was confident that Gilbert would try his luck at touching her cheek again.

Perhaps then, he’d be successful.

Leaning back and feeling much more comfortable than when she’d first sat across from him, Anne launched into a discussion on next month’s Avonlea Gazette. Gilbert was quick to join in, and chipperly regaled with Anne in her imaginings of the audience they might reach with their humble school paper now that they had a printing press.

“Josie will be relieved, at least,” Gilbert said. “No more having to write your _wordy_ articles.”

“I’m articulate, not wordy,” Anne countered with a turn of her nose. “And if Josie didn’t have such graceful penmanship, she wouldn’t be honoured with the task of transcribing my elegant and brilliant articles.”

“I’m not so sure your articles would fall under the _brilliant_ category,” Gilbert joked, laughing when Anne fired a stern, narrow-eyed look in his direction, lethal enough to strip paint. “But Josie does have nice handwriting, it must be said.”

“And she knows it! How she never realized all of us would recognize her writing when she resurrected the Take Notice board with that ridiculous note on Billy is confounding.”

“Ah, so Josie’s to blame for bringing that back,” Gilbert quipped. He admitted he did like seeing Anne squirm for a moment when she realized they’d fallen back on another tense subject between them, but he was pleasantly surprised when Anne didn’t rush to change the topic, but rather, ventured to explore it, albeit, with more delicacy then when she’d first brought it up to him in school.

“Your name’s appeared a few times,” she started.

“Really? And what have I done that’s so noticeable?” Gilbert asked, unashamed at how eager he sounded.

“Ruby noticed the crocus you wore in the pocket of your waistcoat on Monday. Jane noticed you helping Moody with a geography assignment, declaring you an excellent student and mentor. And Diana noticed that you display an admirable leadership in your role as co-editor of our school paper. For someone who told me he wasn’t a take notice kind of guy, you are certainly one to be taken notice of.”

“What about you?” Gilbert asked, following Anne’s example and bravely toeing across the line, temptingly closer to the truth they’d been flirting around the entire train ride.

“Oh, I’ve never appeared on the board. Nothing to take notice of here,” Anne answered quickly.

“First of all, not true. I noticed something about you the first day we met.”

“Gilbert, we have just fallen into pleasant conversation. Don’t ruin it by bringing up anything to do with carrots,” Anne warned, half serious and half in jest. Gilbert nodded even as he smiled mischievously.

“What I meant, though, was is there anything about me _you’ve_ noticed?”

Anne’s eyes seemed to gasp at Gilbert’s boldness, and he only hoped that she was charmed by his confidence. The fact she answered him was promising.

“There is actually,” she began, leaning her elbows on her knees and beckoning Gilbert closer. He followed her instruction eagerly, anxious to know what Anne would say. “After proofing your essay on Sir John A. MacDonald, I’ve noticed that you must be working terribly hard on your doctor’s scrawl…because your writing is nearly illegible.”

“Anne!” Gilbert cried, annoyed for a split second until he realized she was teasing him, her shoulders shaking with mirth at his initial indignation. “Fine,” he snorted. “I was going to tell you some of the things I’ve noticed, but –”

“About a girl?” Anne wondered, bashful in how keen she sounded.

“About a girl,” Gilbert confirmed. When Anne made no motion to speak, rather she simply quirked her eyebrows at him, Gilbert took a deep breath and continued. “It’s just that, I’ve taken notice of someone I find rather remarkable. She’s a free-spirit. Lovely. Someone who supports my ambitions.”

“Does this remarkable girl have a name?” Anne asked, liking the game, the flirtation, and yet she wanted to cut out the teasing and hear the truth. It’s what her whole quest was about, and while a romantic confession from Gilbert Blythe was not the same as learning if her parents loved her or not, it seemed the answer was just as important to Anne’s young, foolish heart.

“She does,” he said gently. “The most interesting name I’ve ever heard.”

But before Gilbert could divulge this titillating truth, the train came to a screeching halt and the porter loudly announced that they had reached their stop. Laughing, shades of bashfulness, embarrassment, and genuine amusement colouring their chuckles, they exited the train and found themselves amongst the crowds on the platform.

“Did you want me to walk with you to Ms. Barry’s?” Gilbert wondered.

“No!” Anne exclaimed a bit too loudly. “I can walk there on my own.”

“That’s right,” Gilbert agreed. “You take objection to escorts.”

“Right,” she sighed.

“Well, if I see you on the evening train, I’ll be sure not to escort you.”

He winked then, and the action so took Anne off guard that she forgot she had no intention of being on the evening train and simply nodded at Gilbert and bid him farewell as he turned away and started for Dr. Ward’s practice.

Watching him walk away, Anne could admit to herself that Gilbert did cut a dashing figure, his work as a stoker and chores around his farm having done rather splendid things to his arms, shoulders, and back. He’d grown quite a bit, too, in the last year, Anne having to crane her neck only ever so slightly in order to meet his hazel gaze.

She supposed, as she was by herself, that there was no harm in admitting that Gilbert Blythe was terribly handsome, and it was with a giddy rush of something that felt like giggles trapped low in her belly bubbling up to warm her chest, throat and face, that Anne decided she would believe that the girl he’d taken notice of was her.

Resolved to talk to Gilbert about these giddy feelings and take notices in the near future, Anne started down her own path, into the heart of Charlottetown. After all, there was another adventure to be had, and Anne Shirley-Cuthbert was determined to meet it.

* * *

“Not you again.”

“I’ve missed you as well, Mr. Kash,” Anne answered sweetly, smiling as she placed her satchel on his counter. “Shall we begin?”

With a grumbling reluctance, Mr. Kash took out a notepad and pencil and gestured for Anne to proceed.

“Behold!” she started, displaying a striking plum coloured glass vial, setting it delicately on the counter. “Now, I know that this humble flask may seem like nothing more than an empty perfume bottle, but in actuality, it was the sacred container of a potent love potion. So intoxicating was the tincture that only a single drop was needed by the gypsy queen, Ethelinda to ensnare the hearts of seven dozen paramours. So be careful if you choose to open it, there may be a drop or two left, and legend says the vapours alone are magnetically powerful. Best to keep the stopper in for now.”

“Hm,” Mr. Kash huffed, marking a figure in his notebook. “Anything else?”

“Doilies all the way from Kensington Palace.”

“And?”

“A paintbrush used by Leonardo Da Vinci. There’s still some flecks of paint caught in the bristles, possibly from the Mona Lisa.”

“I’m sure. What else?”

“Katherine the Great’s comb. See how intricate the design in the wood –”

“Next.”

“Mr. Kash, if you don’t know the history of my treasures however do you hope to sell them?” Anne grumbled.

“Don’t know need to know ‘bout the history of things –”

“Treasures.”

“Things, kid. All of this, is just things. Your junk –”

“_Treasure_.”

“—is a means to an end for me. I don’t need to know the details, just the value.”

“But surely it’s the details that make up the value,” Anne insisted.

“If this was really the comb in some Russian queen’s wig, then maybe,” Mr. Kash admitted. “But you ain’t foolin’ me, Red.”

“Fine,” Anne grumbled, taking the rest of her items out of her satchel and lining them up on the counter. “I need enough to get to Bolingbrook and back again. That’s a ferry and towboat both ways, and then a train ticket back to Avonlea. Also, if there might be enough for a night at an inn, I would be in your debt eternally, Mr. Kash.”

The crochety pawnbroker sniffed, unmoved by Anne’s proclamation. He looked over all of the items she’d presented to him, continuously making notes, taking up a few items to weigh them on a scale, and jotted down a slew of numbers that he tallied together.

“I’ll give you ten dollars for the lot,” he said.

“Fifteen,” Anne countered.

“Twelve, and that’s the final offer.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Kash,” Anne complimented, offering the pawnbroker her hand for a firm shake before he stole away to his back room to draw up her bill of sale and collect her money.

Anne was pleased with the dollar figure. The amount was more than enough for her ferry and train fare, and the towboat shouldn’t be more than a quarter both ways. That should leave her with at least two dollars for a simple room at an inn, in Nova Scotia or even back in Charlottetown. The journey would certainly drain Anne of all her funds. As it was, she’d spent all she had left from her trip last week on the train ticket that morning. She didn’t even have two pennies to rub together, never mind return fare. She’d have to be careful with the money Mr. Kash was going to give her and spend it wisely.

It would take time to get to Bolingbrook, the rest of the morning for certain, and possibly much of the afternoon, but that was alright, because time is what Anne needed.

She needed to sort out her feelings, and not just the anxious, confused jumble plaguing her over the innumerable possibilities of what had become of her birth parents, but the new and complex emotions that had recently surfaced over Gilbert Blythe.

Anne was certain he’d been talking about her when he’d mentioned the girl he’d taken notice of, and it was startling to realize that she was not disturbed, or embarrassed, or even indifferent by that awareness. She was flattered and excited. There was a twinge of shame when she thought about Ruby, how her lovely friend had pined for Gilbert for so long and was sure to be crushed by his rejection, but that pinch of guilt wasn’t enough to make Anne refuse the possibility of being Gilbert’s girl.

Or of him being hers.

So yes, Anne had a great deal to think about, and a long, personal quest of self-discovery was just the thing any intrepid sixteen-year old young lady needed to organize her feelings.

Impatient to leave, Anne’s eyes wandered across the pawn shop while she waited for Mr. Kash, observing the clutter of trinkets, furniture, toys, and casements of jewelry, before finally alighting on a hodgepodge of product piled haphazardly over the entirety of the back counter. There were draperies and gloves, a box of silverware, a typewriter, and a man’s top hat.

In fact, it was John Blythe’s top hat.

Curious, Anne scurried behind the counter to examine the millinery. She was sure it was the same hat she’d seen in the Blythe household time and time again, remembering the particular sheen of the velvet and the way the brim was torn just so along the back. There was even a hint of apple blossoms still clinging to the material.

Realizing what she had found, Anne cleared away the rest of the bric-a-brac from the back counter and discovered three military medals, all inscribed to Captain John Blythe. There were some confederation silver dollars, and a sharp knife that looked as if its handle was made of ivory, the butt sheathed in silver and the army insignia pressed into the shiny metal.

She’d found Gilbert’s lost mementos, all the missing pieces of his father. It seemed everything he’d mentioned was there and she simply had to get them back to Gilbert immediately. With deft hands, Anne packed everything of John Blythe’s into the top hat. She was just laying the knife gently away when Mr. Kash returned from his office.

“Get out from back there!” he commanded.

“Mr. Kash, I know you’ll see reason when I tell you that you’ve been swindled!” Anne exclaimed. “You have my assurance that these items,” she held out the packed top hat, “are stolen property. I happen to know the person that they truly belong to, and he’ll be rapturous with their safe return, so if it’s all the same to you, I’ll be taking these with me as well as my twelve dollars.”

“You take those and that’s all you’re taking,” Mr. Kash replied coldly.

“But Mr. Kash, I told you, these items were sold to you dishonestly. I’m only returning them to their rightful owner. And we’d made a deal, besides, and I’m sure you’re a man of your word.”

“I’m a pawnbroker, Red. I’m a man of business, and words got nothing to do with it. You either take that loot, or you take the twelve dollars.”

“But I need that money. I can’t go on my extremely imperative quest without it. I can’t even get home,” Anne said, desperate to reason with the uncouth man.

“That’s not really my problem,” Mr. Kash countered.

“No, I suppose my troubles aren’t your problem,” Anne agreed slowly, digging up every ounce of courage to say what she was hoping would be her winning hand. “But I’m sure that if I reported you were selling stolen items to a constable, then that might lead to at least part of a problem for you. I really wouldn’t want to see you suffer so, Mr. Kash.”

“Go right ahead,” Mr. Kash replied, calling Anne’s bluff with a mirthless laugh. “You’ll have to leave those things here to get that constable of yours, and I’m not making any promises, but I’m not so sure these goods will still be here when you’d get back.”

“Mr. Kash, you wouldn’t –”

“I don’t have all day, Red. It’s the hat or the money. What’ll it be?”

Anne felt like a thread about to snap. Before her was a choice, a deeply personal and difficult choice, one that held the happiness of Anne and Gilbert in the balance.

On the one hand, Anne was desperate for any scrap of information about her parents. She could feel herself nearly going mad from the mystery, believing that she wouldn’t be able to know true happiness until she had the truth of her lineage in the palm of her hand. Bolingbrook held the answers she needed for her peace of mind, and if she sacrificed her chance to go now, who knew when or if she’d have another opportunity.

On the other hand, there was Gilbert’s peace of mind. Anne knew the safe and complete return of his father’s history – _Gilbert’s_ history – would mean more to the young man than anything in the world. He’d said he’d understood her need to dig up the fossils of her past, appreciated the value of being able to hold something that once belonged to someone you loved; who loved you back. Gilbert knew this because he recognized his father’s spirit in the knickknacks and keepsakes now nestled in the old top hat clutched in Anne’s arms.

Anne knew what the right thing to do was, but more than that, she knew what Gilbert would do if their fortunes were reversed.

“Good day, Mr. Kash,” the redhead said primly, turning deftly away from the pawnbroker and marching out the door, leaving behind the twelve dollars, her collection of trinkets, and her satchel. She cradled the top hat to her chest like it was a babe, protective of it and the contents it held as she made her way through the city.

It didn’t take long for Anne to find Dr. Ward’s office. Gilbert had described the practice so well in the past that Anne would have recognized it immediately even without the large hanging sign announcing the building. Taking a moment to straighten out her skirt and smooth her braid over her shoulder, Anne squared her shoulders and walked into the practice.

A bell heralded her entry, but there was no one at the front desk and no patients lining the cushioned chairs along the wall.

“Hello?” Anne called, but no one answered her.

Perturbed, the sixteen-year old cautiously stepped behind the front desk and made her way down the hall that she assumed led to the examination room. She needed to find Gilbert, and in fact, was so eager to be able to give him the gift of his father’s stolen items, that she didn’t even think of how humiliating it would be to have to confess her spoiled plans to him, since she’d have to ask him for the train fare back to Avonlea.

A muffled voice caught Anne’s attention and she diverted towards a room whose door was ajar. From what Anne could see, the open room was an office but also an impressive library, with floor to ceiling bookshelves stuffed full of texts on all manner of interesting subjects, she was sure. Congenially, Anne knocked on the door as she also pushed it further open, letting herself into the room.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother, but I was looking for –”

And as if she’d been plunged into an icy river, Anne’s whole body seized up.

She’d found Gilbert.

And he was currently in the arms of a very pretty blond.

* * *

Gilbert couldn’t get his head on straight.

It reflected in his manners when he ignored the questions of Mrs. Klondike, who was overexaggerating her maladies (indigestion was not a sure sign of heart failure), having to be snapped back to attention and then lectured by the stout old woman that he’d be a terrible doctor if he couldn’t get his head out of the clouds long enough to pay his patients’ ills his full attention.

It reflected in his study when he couldn’t remember the difference between a viral and a bacterial infection, leaving Dr. Ward gently disheartened, especially since Gilbert was normally quite bright and a quick learner.

It reflected in his organization when he mixed up the labels for laudanum and morphine, which could have proven rather disastrous for Mr. Locke, who had come to the clinic for a coughing solution.

And it reflected in his words when he fumbled during a recitation of a study in one of Dr. Ward’s medical periodicals and confused organism with orgasm, right in front of Miss Rose.

“Goodness, Mr. Blythe!” the young woman exclaimed, giggling prettily as Gilbert sputtered out an apology for his crass language. “I dare not ask where your mind is today.”

“I’m so sorry,” Gilbert said sincerely, dropping the magazine on Dr. Ward’s desk and rubbing a hand over his eyes.

“Not to worry,” she assured kindly. “We’ve all us students of medicine made that particular vocabulary fumble once or twice.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Gilbert lamented, mortified with his poor performance of the day thus far.

“Perhaps a second lesson might cheer you up?” Miss Rose suggested, smiling demurely at the flustered young man. She carefully raised a hand, pantomiming dusting lint off Gilbert’s shoulder before sweeping the tips of her fingers down his arm until they grazed the warm skin of his wrist.

Gilbert swallowed, lowering his gaze before twisting his hand away from Miss Rose’s practiced caress and shaking his head at the invitation.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not feeling up to it.”

“Tell me Mr. Blythe, are you alright?” Miss Rose wondered, concern tinting her words, her pretty eyes noting the distress hidden in the eighteen-year old’s expression.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Gilbert,” Miss Rose said gently, and the young man was certain it was the first time he’d ever heard the woman say his Christian name. “If I’ve offended y—”

“Never!” he answered sharply. “I promise, Winifred, this has nothing to do with you.”

“Alright then,” she said, crossing her arms and making it quite clear she had no intention of letting the subject drop. “What girl does it have to do with?”

“Am I that obvious?” he asked, ears going hot at her perceptiveness.

“Not as obvious as you’d like to be to this mystery girl, I suspect,” Miss Rose teased, the jape making Gilbert laugh, even if it was ruefully at his own misfortunes in romance.

“I admit, there is a girl. She’s…she’s special.”

“That sounds promising. Have you made any advances?”

“I’ve tried? To be honest, I thought I was being obvious, but it wasn’t until today that I think she finally understood what I’ve been trying to say. I’m not even sure _I_ knew what I was trying to tell her until this morning, but, we had a moment…and it all clicked.”

“My, my, what a thing it is to see first love unfolding right in front of your eyes,” Miss Rose sighed sweetly. “The look of it suits you. But besides trials of the heart, is there anything else on your mind young man?”

And as easily as if he were confiding in an older sister, Gilbert admitted everything to Miss Rose, from his concerns over Mary’s health, to his difficulty balancing school, the paper, his apprenticeship and the farm, to his anticipation that the orchard would flourish in the coming season and yield profitable crops, to his hope of earning a scholarship to Queens with impressive test scores, to the pain he was still shouldering over the deplorable crime that had been committed against his father’s memory.

Gilbert didn’t know when the tears had started to pour down his cheeks, and when Miss Rose compassionately took him into her arms, squeezing the sorrow out of him like one might squeeze juice from an orange, he went willingly into the embrace. Gilbert’s arms pulled Miss Rose close and he laid his head on her shoulder as he tried to regain control of his tumultuous emotions. The eighteen-year old hadn’t quite realized how much he’d been bottling up, and it felt good to release the stress that was shadowing all aspects of his life.

“There now,” Miss Rose cooed, so much like a protective sibling that it made Gilbert smile. It felt good to be tended to by a loving hand, and he knew then that Miss Rose would make a fine doctor one day.

“Thank you,” he said, wiping at his cheeks, sighing against Miss Rose’s shoulder and simply basking in the comfort of her kindness for a moment longer.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother, but I was looking for –”

Gilbert was quick to lift his head and turn towards the door, his face going white when he locked eyes with the redhead before him.

“Anne,” he said, quickly extracting himself from Miss Rose’s arms and moving to stand a respectable few feet away from the blond woman. He knew what the scenario had looked like, and from the expression on Anne’s pale face, her ginger brows raised in shock and her peach hued lips pinched in an upset grimace, it seemed Anne suspected that Gilbert’s embrace with Miss Rose was not the innocent gesture that it had truly been. “May I introduce Miss Winifred Rose,” he started, knowing his delivery was stilted, but hoping that if he could just get Anne to understand that he and Winifred were colleagues, that she was only showing him compassion in a moment of vulnerability, she’d stop looking at him as if he’d crushed her heart.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Anne managed to say, voice lifeless and dim.

“Miss Rose, this is Anne Shirley-Cuthbert. She’s my neighbour.”

“From Avonlea? Well, it’s a pleasure,” Miss Rose said, smiling. Anne could barely manage a nod in acknowledgement.

“What brings you here?” Gilbert asked a tad too eagerly, and he could practically feel Miss Rose catching on to who Anne was to him. He only hoped her knowing smile wasn’t too telling to Anne.

“I…um…I-I only wanted to give you this,” Anne sputtered, slamming a dark, heavy bundle into his chest before stepping back as if being so close to Gilbert had burned her. “I’m sorry I interrupted,” she said, grey-green eyes darting between Gilbert and Miss Rose, and the lightness that so often filled Gilbert when Anne was nearby suddenly curdled into a leaden anchor that was determined to pull his heart down into his feet.

“Anne, it wasn’t –”

“See you,” she said, spinning quickly on her heel and dashing out of the clinic, the tails of the green ribbon holding her braid in place the only things to wave goodbye in her departure.

“What marvelous red hair,” Miss Rose commented after Anne was long gone, approaching Gilbert’s side. “Was that the special girl?”

Gilbert nodded, unable to speak, to move, only able to see the flash of hurt and betrayal Anne had pinned him with when she’d walked away.

“What’s that she gave you?” Miss Rose asked, peering at the odd collection that had been so roughly shoved in Gilbert’s arms. “Oh…”

At Miss Rose’s sigh, Gilbert examined Anne’s gift, his breath catching in his throat as his hazel eyes alighted on a familiar hilt.

His father’s knife.

And his medals, and his coins, and all of it in the silly old top hat John Blythe had loved.

Anne had found his father’s things. Somehow, she’d stumbled upon his precious tokens and brought them back to him. It felt as if she’d returned John Blythe’s spirit into the arms of his son. It was a gift too tremendous for words, and yet Gilbert simply had to go after Anne and thank her at that very moment.

“Miss Rose –”

“Go on, then,” the blond woman gestured, taking the top hat and all the items held within, treating the things with the reverence and respect they deserved. “I’ll tell Dr. Ward you were taken down with a case of _animi dolore_. And I’d better not see you back here until you’ve cleared the air with your Anne.”

And with that, she winked at Gilbert and shooed him out of the clinic, rather hopeful that when he was back at the practice next it would be with a story of young love in the first stages of sumptuous bloom.

* * *

“You are a fool, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert! A monumental fool!”

Anne bemoaned herself viciously with each step, cutting away at her intelligence, her confidence, and her vanity. She wanted to close her eyes and wish everything around her away, the crowds, the buildings, the whole of Charlottetown, but when she tried all her imagination could conjure up was the horrible, haunting image of Gilbert and Miss Winifred Rose, their arms around each other, bodies pressed close. In her very worst daydreams, they were kissing as passionately as any of the lovers from her novels.

Gilbert Blythe was a scoundrel, to be sure, but Anne was more angry with herself than the terrible boy who, for a few hours, had made her believe she was someone worthy enough of his heart.

She should have known he hadn’t meant her when he’s spoken of a free-spirited, _lovely_ girl he’d taken notice of. Anne knew she wasn’t pretty, and though she did find a refined elegance in the flourish the ‘e’ gave her plain name, it certainly wasn’t anything near as interesting as _Winifred Rose_.

Maybe Josie was right. Maybe Anne was doomed to the life of a spinster.

But if a life alone and unloved was to be her fate, surely she could fill her years with heaps of adventures, ones that took her to the far corners of the globe, to the depths of great seas, to the tops of the highest trees, and into the mysteries not only of the world around her, but of herself, too. She knew it was foolhardy to get tangled in a snare of boys and crushes and romantic eyes. When she’d declared herself to be the bride of adventure, she should have stuck to that plan rather than let herself believe, for even one minute, that Gilbert Blythe cared for her.

Anne didn’t know how she could ever hope to truly understand romantic love.

To be honest, if the knowledge of romance led to the unbelieve pain she was currently suffering, Anne was positive that nothing good could be gained from the subject, anyway.

What she did know was that ardour was inconveniently distracting. It had certainly diverted her attention away from the very purpose for which she’d come to Charlottetown in the first place, and while Anne knew she’d done the right thing in returning Gilbert’s stolen treasures to him, a petty, selfish part of her wished she had taken the money and simply gone on with her quest to Nova Scotia. At least then she would have been spared the excruciating heartbreak of seeing Gilbert in the arms of another woman.

“Idiot,” she sneered to herself, refusing to cry. She wouldn’t give Gilbert the satisfaction of her tears.

In fact, she wouldn’t give him a single spare moment of her thoughts any longer, resolved to declare this particular adventure an utter failure and throw in the towel and just go home.

Milling through the crowds, Anne walked until she reached the main road out of Charlottetown, staring down the gravel path that looped over fields and woods far into the distance. It might have been faster to hop a train back to Avonlea, but the prospect of completing the daring feat alone was not nearly as lustrous as it might once have been. Besides, it wasn’t an impossible task to walk back to Avonlea, only a long one, and if she was able to hitch a ride with a passing merchant or farmer, she might be able to make it back to Green Gables before nightfall.

Marilla would be livid.

But, after the wretched day Anne had had, Marilla’s wrath would be welcome. Her guardian’s ire she could handle; Anne’s own anguished emotions of humiliation, inadequacy, and heartbreak were much more perilous, and she had no desire to wade those harsh waters.

So, she started heading home.

Looking ahead, Anne could see that there were no wagons making their way down the long brown path into Charlottetown. Still walking, the sixteen-year old turned back to see if there might be a passing coach leaving the city when her foot slipped on an upturned rock in the road. Stumbling, Anne waved her arms about, hoping to catch her balance, but before she could right her footing, she took a step back and was met with empty air.

“Ah!”

Anne tumbled heel over head, her hair gnarling in the bare dead branches of a holly bush, ripping her ribbon from her braid so that her hair was a cascading disaster that blinded her on her spill into the dry ditch. She landed on her back, the wind knocked out of her for several long, painful minutes before she was able to take a proper breath. Lifting herself into a sitting position, Anne looked up at the steep, pebble-laden slope she’d plunged down, unable to even see the road over the brush salted lip of the embankment.

Feeling even more foolish for her ungraceful plummet, Anne moved to stand so she could begin the arduous task of hoisting herself out of the trench when a crippling pain shot up from her left ankle, sending spikes of torture into her knee and hip, forcing the sixteen-year old back into the dirt.

Gritting her teeth, Anne unlaced her boot and ripped it off her foot, whimpering when she saw that her ankle was already starting to swell, the wool of her stocking bulging at the joint.

“Somebody?! Help!” she cried out, hoping her voice would be heard by a passerby on the winding road above. “Anyone?”

She called out for aid for over an hour, but not a single person seemed to be on the road to hear her plea. Despondent, Anne let out a watery sigh and flopped onto the ground, arms spread out, her hair a tangled flame beneath her head and grey-green eyes trained on the beautiful blue sky.

So, it had finally happened.

Anne Shirley-Cuthbert had, at last, fulfilled Marilla’s worst expectations of her adventures by finding herself trapped in a ditch on the side of the road with a sprained ankle to impede her and no help in sight.

It only made matters worse when her stomach growled monstrously, reminding the young woman that she had, in the excitement of her adventure and the agony of her heartbreak, forgotten to eat.

* * *

“Wait here.”

Gilbert nodded, following Rollings order and lingered in the foyer. He’d never been inside Ms. Barry’s mansion, and he had to admit the house was truly magnificent. He tried to picture it awash in satin drapery and garlands of silk flowers, the way he’d once overheard Anne describing a party she’d been to at the fine house to the other girls in school. He found it rather easy to imagine Anne spinning amongst a sea of dancers, her body as lithe and elegant as any Prima Ballerina, and her hair the true embodiment of living fire.

Maybe the next time Ms. Barry held a ball and Anne was invited, he could ask to join her.

“Gilbert. Hello,” Cole said as he entered the foyer, surprised but not disappointed to see his old school chum. “You look well.”

“Cole. Great, you haven’t left yet,” Gilbert said, shaking his friend’s hand. “I was hoping I’d catch you and Anne before you left for the ferry.”

“What are you talking about?” Cole asked, brow furrowed with confusion. “I’m not going on a ferry. Anne isn’t here.”

“But, she told me she was going with you back to Nova Scotia; to continue looking for information on her parents,” Gilbert replied, trepidation starting to slowly squeeze around his heart.

“Anne wrote that Ms. Cuthbert had forbidden her from leaving the island…” Cole reported, coming to the same conclusion as Gilbert at the exact moment the older boy pinched the bridge of his nose. “She’s going by herself,” he realized.

Cole watched as an anguished worry contorted Gilbert’s handsome features, and he felt his own heart clench with fear for his dearest friend. It wasn’t safe to go it alone, not on this adventure. Cole had seen the truth of that when he’d accompanied Anne to the asylum, remembering how agonizing that trip to the past had been for the spirited girl. He feared for the precious soul of that effervescent creature, that it might become consumed by the years of darkness she’d known and repressed.

The problem with repression was that, once you unsealed it, it could very nearly drown you if you didn’t have the right support to keep your head above water.

Looking at the grandfather clock in the corner, Cole felt himself hope.

“There isn’t a ferry to Nova Scotia for another half hour. We could get to her,” he told Gilbert.

“Let’s go!” the eighteen-year old urged and, within ten minutes, he was helping Rollings finish saddling up a horse and wagon. “Do you know the way?” he asked, handing Cole the reigns.

Cole masterfully led the horse through the busy streets of Charlottetown, maneuvering their ride all the way to the docks with five minutes to spare before the ferry’s departure. Leaping from the wagon, Gilbert didn’t bother to help Cole secure the horse or wait for him to join him as he dashed towards the pier, hazel eyes trained on the humble boat set to sail across the Northumberland Strait. Flitting through the crowds of dockhands and well-wishers, Gilbert frantically searched the crowd, watching as passengers crossed the gangplank and stood along the railings of the decks, seeking the telltale flame of Anne’s hair.

He couldn’t spot her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t already on the ferry, sequestered inside somewhere.

“Gilbert,” Cole said, joining him after who knew how long.

“I don’t see her,” he groaned, nearly ready to jump onto the ship and damn the consequences.

“The ticket clerk said he didn’t recognize anyone of Anne’s description buying a ticket today,” Cole reported. “I don’t think she’s here.”

“Dammit, Anne,” Gilbert muttered, taking off his hat to run his fingers through his curls. “If not here, then where would she go?”

“Did she say anything to you besides her plan to go to Nova Scotia?” Cole asked, placing a firm hand on Gilbert’s shoulder, trying to hold together his own distress by keeping Gilbert calm.

“No,” the dark-haired boy answered helplessly, jaw clenching as he tried to keep himself from imagining what sort of trouble Anne might have gotten herself into. “She mentioned going to a church to look for records on her parents,” he said, fiddling with his hat, his nails playing along the brim in agitation.

And then it dawned on him.

“She went to a pawnshop,” he realized.

“How do you know?” Cole asked.

Excitedly, Gilbert related the tale of his father’s stolen items and Anne’s miraculous return of them.

“They had to have been in a pawnshop. There’s nowhere else she could have found them!” he exclaimed.

“I might know which one she went to,” Cole offered, remembering when Anne had kidnapped him a year ago on her quest to save Ms. Stacy’s job. Though he hadn’t gone with her and the rest of their classmates to the pawnbroker, Anne had mentioned it was the shop belonging to a Mr. Kash.

Feeling the same surge of hope he knew Gilbert was, the two boys bustled back to the wagon and rushed their ride to Mr. Kash’s pawnshop, a clean, upright looking business just off of Mt. Edward Road. In a hyper hurry, Cole and Gilbert burst into the store, disrupting the irritable owner as he was in the middle of selling an emerald ring to a newly married couple.

“Apologies, Mr. Kash, but our business is urgent,” Cole said, nodding to the newlyweds before turning his full attention on the pawnbroker.

“Do you remember selling a top hat, some army medals, a knife, and silver dollars to a girl of sixteen with red hair tied back in a braid?” Gilbert asked.

“You mean Red?” Mr. Kash guessed, rolling his eyes as if the memory of Anne was insufferable. “I remember her _taking_ those things you mentioned.”

“You didn’t sell them to her?” Cole asked.

“I was going to pay her for this sack of junk,” Mr. Kash said, moving behind his counter and pulling out a satchel both boys knew to belong to Anne, and plopping it on his counter, the bag filled with the pieces she’d intended to pawn. “But then she got a look at the top hat and such and tried to walk away with the money I was prepared to give her, and the rest of it. So, I made her chose.”

“Scalawag!” Cole snarled.

“You do know the ‘top hat and such’ were stolen from my home, don’t you, Mr. Kash?” Gilbert said sternly.

“Red might’ve mentioned it,” he answered, scratching at his beard. “But I don’t ask no questions when folks bring wares to sell or trade.”

“Maybe you should start to,” Cole hissed.

“So you’re saying you didn’t give the girl any money for her things?” Gilbert checked.

“Not one red cent,” Mr. Kash declared, almost proud of his callous behaviour. “She made some stink about needing the money to get to Nova Scotia or Avonlea or somewhere, but like I said, it was either the top hat and the rest of it, or the money. Red picked the hat.”

“Her name is Anne,” Gilbert objected, digging into his coat pocket and pulling out two dollars, slapping the notes onto Mr. Kash’s counter before snatching up Anne’s satchel, making it perfectly clear he was taking the bag and daring the pawnbroker with a steely look to challenge him on the action.

Mr. Kash scowled.

“She your girl, boyo?” the man sneered. “You know what they say about redheads, hmm? They’ve got some spitfire in ‘em,” he taunted, his smirk enough to make Gilbert want to punch out each of the man’s yellowed teeth, and he might have had Cole not gripped his shoulder and redirected Gilbert out of the shop and back to the wagon.

“Cretin,” Gilbert spat, gently depositing Anne’s things in the wagon before bracing himself against the side of the cart.

“What now?” Cole wondered, at a loss.

Gilbert clenched his jaw, trying to think of what Anne would do next. True, the girl was imaginative, but she was realistic when the situation warranted it, and being alone and penniless in the city certainly left one with few possibilities. If she had no way of boarding the ferry to Nova Scotia that would leave her with only one option.

“She’s going back to Avonlea,” he realized.

“With no money? How?” Cole asked.

“She’s hopped train cars before,” Gilbert said, and neither boy could help smirking at the memory of that particular adventure.

“She might try hitching,” Cole suggested, and Gilbert had to admit that was another viable option. Anne did love walking, and though it would take her all day, she could potentially walk back to Avonlea if she wanted to, the journey shortened by some time if she were able to convince a passing merchant to convey her part of the way.

“Alright,” Gilbert said, pushing himself away from the wagon, his body set in a determined stance. “I’m going to start for the road out of town. You try the trainyard. We’ll meet back at Ms. Barry’s in two hours. If one of us finds her, we either bring her back with us, or stay put so that the other will know to come looking.”

“I hope you find her,” Cole said, desperately worried about Anne and what sort of misadventure she’d gotten herself into.

“One of us will,” Gilbert stated, the unspoken ‘_we have to_,’ pressing a trepidatious tension between the boys.

Cole got back in the wagon and started for the train station while Gilbert began his march down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched, his step desperate in a way that betrayed just how very worried he was about Anne. It didn’t take him long to reach the outskirts of Charlottetown, the long winding road before him reminding him of his father’s favourite Walt Whitman poem. Though it was with no light heart that Gilbert started down the path, he did take solid, measured steps along the gravel, resolute in his mission to find Anne.

He dared not think of not finding her, the possibility too terrible to dwell on. Gilbert simply had to believe that she was either somewhere along this road or at the train station. He only hoped when Anne was discovered that she was well and, if he was lucky, willing to listen to him explain what she’d seen between him and Miss Rose.

Perhaps there had been a mild attraction on his part for the older woman, a passing fancy that Gilbert had been content to console himself with when Anne had so soundly rejected him last week when they’d taken the train together. It had felt so pointless to continue to pine for the girl when she seemed to have no feeling for him at all.

But then that morning had happened.

Gilbert and Anne had spoken so honestly and openly as the train had ambled them towards Charlottetown, getting to know one another and sharing parts of themselves just as Gilbert had always hoped they might.

He really liked Anne. In fact, Gilbert was fairly certain he could fall easily in love with the redhead if she’d just give him a chance, and that morning, he’d seen that chance sparkle in her grey-green eyes.

There really was no hope of his heart ever belonging to anyone else after that.

Now, he just needed to find Anne, and the courage, to tell her of his feelings.

Gilbert walked along the road for some time, keeping an eye on his watch to keep abreast of when he’d have to turn back to meet Cole.

There was no one on the road, and it was starting to get dark, cold, and it pained Gilbert to think of Anne alone somewhere out there. Suddenly, a fluttering of colour caught Gilbert’s eye and he made for the side of the road where a familiar green ribbon waved at him from the gnarled limbs of naked holly bush.

It was Anne’s ribbon, the one that looked so lovely against the fiery brilliance of her red hair. So she _had_ decided to try walking back to Avonlea. Maybe she wasn’t yet too far along the road.

“Anne?!” he called out, untwisting the ribbon from the bush and tucking it into his pocket. “Anne!”

Gilbert cried out her name into the encroaching twilight, fear and hope grasping at his heart like an unrelenting vice.

* * *

“Princess Cordelia was a beautiful royal, with dark ebony hair that flowed down her back in a waterfall of shiny curls, a complexion as clear and unsullied as the palace’s finest china, and lips as soft and pink as a rose petal’s. She was adored by all, her people, her servants, even her enemies. But most of all, Princess Cordelia was loved with an unconditional ferocity by her noble and benevolent mother and father. The princess loved everyone back with as much passion and loyalty as she received, but perhaps her most valiant love was for a boy of no discernible lineage. A man who hailed from farmers; a simple people, but hardworking, dedicated, and true. The young man’s heart was as pure as gold and, much to Princess Cordelia’s surprise, he’d lost that golden heart to her from the moment they’d first met. He offered her all that he had and all that he was, and Princess Cordelia, utterly smitten and as ardently in love with the boy as he was with her, accepted his heart by offering her own in return.

“But then, one day, Princess Cordelia awoke to find herself locked away in a dark, lonely tower. Her fine satin robes had melted away into itchy, ill-fitting skirts, and her flawless skin became marred with thousands of freckles, and her hair – her beautiful dark curls – had shrivelled away into straight stringy tresses the colour of carrots. As she searched her cramped little prison, the Princess remembered that everything she’d once thought to be true was, in fact, a lie.

“Her whole life; the kingdom bursting with people who adored and admired her, the parents she knew loved her beyond all measure, the faithful boy who showed her romance and adventure, even her own visage was nothing more than the lunatic imaginings of a frightened and lonely little girl who could only cope with the tragedy that surrounded her by finding solace in a world that wasn’t real, with people who didn’t exist, and with a version of herself that was as perfect as she was flawed.

“Princess Cordelia wasn’t even her real name, neither was it Gertrude, or Katie. It was simply Anne, and even though it was Anne with an ‘e’, it was a name that belonged to an unwanted orphan who had no family or friend in the world. She didn’t even have the love of the boy she adored above all others, for he’d found comfort in the arms of a different girl…a woman as refined and classically beautiful as a Grecian statue, with curls of gold-spun sunshine.

“So, Anne was alone, trapped in a tower with naught but her imagination to take her away from the wretched reality that surrounded her. And that is the tragical romance and all of Princess Cordelia.”

Anne didn’t bother to wipe away the tears that were trickling down her face as she released her woeful tale into the twilight sky. It had started to get cold an hour ago, the ground beneath Anne’s back hard and the thin grass going stiff as the sun set. The sky was an ombre quilt ranging from cornflower to azure, sapphire, indigo and just the barest hint of midnight. Some stars were visible, twinkling down on Anne with insulting mirth as the young woman bemoaned her fate of freezing to death in a ditch.

“Anne?!”

And now madness from dehydration was setting in, for she was sure she heard the wind calling her name.

“Anne?”

Or maybe it was hypothermia setting in? Were oratory delusions a symptom of hypothermia? For a moment, Anne wished Gilbert were around for her to ask.

“ANNE!”

But that _was_ Gilbert!

That was his voice, crying out her name, desperate and terrified as the air seemed to get colder by the minute. Sitting up, Anne searched the ledge of the ditch, but was unable to see anything of the boy calling out to her.

“Gilbert!” she cried out, but her voice was too weak from the hours she’d abused it crying for help earlier in the day. She heard him call her name again, only he sounded further away, and the thought that Gilbert would miss her spurred Anne into action.

Searching the ground around her, Anne picked up her discarded boot and heaved it up and out of the ditch. The deep thud it made when it landed on the road was satisfying, and as Gilbert continued to call, his voice coming closer and closer, Anne felt her heart start to swell, though whether it was with relief or dread she wasn’t sure.

“Anne?” Gilbert asked, finally approaching the edge of the ditch and peering down, the hard, worried lines on his face relaxing the moment he spotted her. “Anne! Are you alright?”

“Not particularly. I’m in a ditch,” she exclaimed, voice as rough as the ground under her body.

“So you are,” he agreed, deftly skidding down as quickly and carefully as possible along the rocky slope until he landed in the trench and made his way towards her. “I thought you said this never happened,” he teased, crouching beside her.

“Well, I’m not facedown, am I?” she snapped. Part of her rather hoped Gilbert would hiss back at her and they could have a good, cathartic row, but the young man just smiled at her as if she hung the sun.

“Have you been here all day?” he asked, looking her over, relieved that, if she was hurt, she wasn’t so hurt she couldn’t throw verbal barbs at him.

“I sprained my ankle when I fell down here,” Anne said, pointing to her left leg. “I can’t bare weight on it at all.”

“Alright,” Gilbert said, his eyes alighting on her swollen joint. “I can fix this.”

He started pulling her stocking down and did not expect the rapid-fire slaps that attached his hands, forcing him to retreat.

“Gilbert Blythe just what do you think you’re doing?!” Anne screeched, her voice squeaking in her indignation.

“Trying to take care of your sprain,” he growled.

“Taking advantage, you mean,” she barked.

“I would never!”

“Oh! So you weren’t just undressing me a moment ago?!”

“Your stocking is hardly your underwear, Anne.”

“Do _not_ speak to me about my underwear!”

“I’m not! I’m trying to talk about your stockings!” Gilbert hollered, sure that all of Prince Edward Island heard his frustrated rumble. “I need to get it off so I can look at your injury. Then I need to stabilize it, and then I need to get you out of this damn ditch.”

“So now you’re cursing at me, too!” Anne exclaimed. “What is wrong with you?”

“Right now, your stubbornness is kind of rubbing me the wrong way,” he boldly declared, and Anne was at such a loss for words that she never noticed Gilbert take advantage of her crossness to slip her stocking off and examine her ankle.

“Ouch!” she grumbled, hissing through her teeth as Gilbert softly prodded the swollen and bruised joint.

“Sorry,” he said, being as delicate as he was able through his examination.

Anne bit her lip the entire time as Gilbert wrapped her discarded stocking around her ankle and foot as if it were a bandage, and she had to admit that it was clever of him to use her ribbon (though where he had found it she didn’t know) to bind it all together. Gilbert worked deftly and competently, jaw clenched the entire time. When he finished, he sat down by her foot and released a breath that was so long and deep, it sounded as if he’d been holding it in for hours.

Anne’s stomach chose that inopportune moment to unleash a gurgle so loud one would think a knot of toads were sitting with them in the ditch.

“Let me guess,” Gilbert said, biting the inside of his cheek so his smile wasn’t obvious to the piqued redhead. “You forgot to eat?”

“Shut up,” Anne snorted, turning away, her pretty blush tinting her cheeks a ruddy flame in the waning light. “What do we do now?”

“Now, we wait for Cole,” Gilbert said, piling a few flat stones on top of one another before delicately settling Anne’s bandaged foot down on the cool rocks, providing some elevation.

“Cole’s coming?” Anne asked, surprised.

“He’s been helping me scour Charlottetown for you all day,” Gilbert said.

“Oh…” the sixteen-year old sighed, coming to realize how much trouble and worry she must have caused. “You know I lied, then,” she said, shame coating her words.

“You were going to Nova Scotia by yourself, weren’t you,” Gilbert stated.

“I have to. I have to continue my quest on my own,” Anne argued, though there was no steam behind her words and even less conviction. “At the orphanage…it broke me to go back there. And Cole saw a part of me…my past…I hardly want to know it myself, never mind anyone else. It’s not something I want to share.”

“Everyone’s past has something harsh in it, Anne,” Gilbert reasoned. “Having others you can rely on to support you when confronting those demons makes the struggle bearable.”

Anne knew Gilbert was speaking from experience.

When he’d left Avonlea two years ago to partake in his own personal journey to discover meaning in his young life, Gilbert had set off alone. And yet, he’d returned to his little village a year later with a kindred spirit in Bash and had built a new family around him to help carry the burden of his grief and return purpose and connection to his existence. 

“Thank you, by the way,” Gilbert said kindly. “For finding my father’s things. It means the world to have them returned to me.”

“I know,” Anne said.

“It must have been a difficult choice: my dad’s possessions or the money you needed to continue your quest.”

“It wasn’t,” Anne said, and Gilbert could hear the genuineness in her declaration. “I’m sorry for this afternoon,” she fumbled awkwardly, turning her face away from Gilbert’s probing gaze. “If I’d known you were with…someone, I would never –”

“It wasn’t what it looked like,” Gilbert interrupted, making Anne snap her eyes back on him.

“You don’t have to spare my feelings, Gilbert. Why shouldn’t you be interested in Miss Rose? She seems bright, pleasant, and has lustrous blond hair –”

“I don’t have feelings for Miss Rose,” Gilbert insisted. “In fact, there’s only ever been one girl I’ve had feelings for, but she’s sometimes too obstinate to realize that I’ve been trying to tell her I like her for months now.”

“Well who is she then?” Anne demanded, piqued and hurt and hurtling dangerously close to a truth she was both desperate to hear and frightened to know. Gilbert looked at Anne steadily, his hazel eyes shinning again, just as they had on the train that morning, stealing Anne’s breath and making her heart beat temperamentally in her chest. The young man seemed to be digging deep into the wells of his strength, finding the courage, the conviction and confidence to plunge forward with his confession.

The tension surrounding the pair was so thick it was like a fog unto the two of them, only dispelling when Gilbert took a deep breath and finally spoke.

“She’s –”

“Anne!”

The pair of adolescents looked up, hearing the unmistakable racket of a wagon ambling down the dirt road.

“Cole!” Gilbert hollered, scrambling up the slope to flag down his friend. When Cole’s face appeared over the edge of the ditch, his pale visage illuminated by the golden glow from a lantern, Anne’s smile was marvelous.

“I can’t wait to hear this one,” he teased, watching as Gilbert returned to Anne, helping her to her feet. “What have you done to yourself?”

“It’s nothing. Just your run of the mill sprained ankle that Dr. Blythe has kindly bandaged,” Anne quipped, hobbling on her good foot.

“How are you supposed to get out of there with a sprained ankle?” Cole wondered.

“Well, you and Gilbert can just pull me up –”

“Nope,” Gilbert announced, moving to stand in front of Anne, crouching down just a bit. “Hop on.”

“What?!” Anne screeched, her throat burning at the stress she was putting on her poor, tired vocal cords. Cole laughed like a hysterical hyena from his perch at the lip of the ditch, and Anne hoped the lantern light was bright enough that he might see the daggers she was scowling at him.

“It’s the quickest way,” Gilbert reasoned, flashing Anne one of his charming smiles from over his shoulder. “Come on, Carrots.”

“We,” Anne stressed, pointing between herself, Gilbert and Cole, “will never speak of this. Ever. This never happened.”

“If you don’t hurry up nothing will happen,” Gilbert grumbled and for that, Anne made sure to dig her knees into his sides when she hoisted herself onto his back, feeling some gratification when he grunted with discomfort. “Hang on.”

Anne did just that, her arms looping across Gilbert’s shoulders and her cheek pressed tight against his black curls as he pulled them both out of the ditch and back onto the road.

* * *

“I must say, Gilbert, you did a fine job,” Dr. Ward complimented as he looked over Anne’s sprained ankle. Gilbert appreciated the praise of his mentor and nodded his acknowledgement, unable to contain his deep sigh of relief when Dr. Ward reported that Anne’s sprain would heal within a few days and that there were no other severe injuries to her person.

“Well, it appears our Anne-girl is made of stronger stuff than one might suppose,” Aunt Jo exclaimed, coming up to Anne’s makeshift sickbed on a gold upholstered chaise. The long, cushioned couch was where Gilbert had settled Anne when he and Cole had returned with her, the young man barking orders that Dr. Ward be called immediately, demanding pillows and blankets and ice and food for the young woman gripped protectively in his arms. He’d had Anne’s ankle properly stabilized and tended by the time the doctor arrived, and if Anne didn’t seem so petulantly put out, she might open her eyes to how romantic the whole scene appeared.

“My work is done here,” Dr. Ward announced, closing his medical bag.

“Rollings will show you out,” Aunt Jo instructed, her butler quick to follow her commands, escorting the doctor away. “Well, you’ve certainly given us all a fright, young lady,” she said sternly, turning her attention to Anne, who had the good grace to look chagrined under the old woman’s disenchanted glower.

“Sorry, Aunt Jo,” she said meekly, lowering her empty teacup back to its saucer, cupping the fine bone china delicately in her hands. “I don’t mean to cause trouble or get into it. I just…I only meant to –”

“Enough of that,” Aunt Jo admonished gently. “I’m only relieved you’re safe, Anne-girl. We can talk more of this in the morning over breakfast. Now, I’ll go and see about getting a couple of rooms ready.” And with a meaningful flitting look between the three adolescents in the sitting room, Aunt Josephine elegantly exited the chamber, the sound of her ebony walking stick echoing down the marble hall.

Shyly, Anne looked over at Cole and Gilbert, astutely doing her best not to linger on the curly-haired young man, fighting a blush that wanted desperately to bloom across her cheeks as she remembered being carried in his arms into the elegant house. Gilbert had lifted her as if she weighed little more than a feather, his arms secure and sure around her back and knees, and then his hands had been nothing but professional as he’d worked diligently to ensure her damaged ankle was properly tended as they waited for the doctor.

She supposed he really might care for her, at least as much as he might care for any of his neighbours who’d been injured, and that consideration certainly deserved a thank you.

Anne only had to drum up the courage to say the words.

“I’m going to see if Aunt Jo needs any help,” Cole announced, breaking the strange, thick silence as he approached Anne and gave her a quick hug. “I’ll freshen up your tea, too.”

“Cole?” Anne questioned as he scooped her teacup, begging him with her wide, grey-green eyes to not leave her alone with Gilbert. Though her friend seemed to read Anne’s message loud and clear, he just smiled sweetly and kissed her brow tenderly.

“You’ll be fine,” he whispered against her skin.

“Traitor,” Anne whispered back, but there was no malice in her taunt. She supposed she would have to talk to Gilbert on her own eventually, she just would have preferred it not be for a few years, or maybe a decade. However, Fate had never been so kind as to give Anne exactly what she wanted, and Cole, it seemed, was in cahoots with the fickle hand of destiny.

The young man left the room with a lovely, confident gait, and now it was just Anne and Gilbert.

The silence that stretched between them was just as taut as it had been in the ditch and on the train.

Come to think of it, a great many of the stretches of silences that permeated their acquaintanceship were tinted with that coursing electric energy that so often made Anne feel like a light bulb about to burst.

She needed to speak, to get her words out before they swallowed her whole.

“Gilbert thank—”

“It’s you,” he interrupted, looking at Anne with his big hazel eyes, the storm of emotions curling in them just as they had so many times since they’d met up on the train that morning. “The girl I have feelings for. It’s you, Anne.”

“I don’t believe you,” Anne said, unable to tame the heat in her words, turning her face away from the handsome boy. “You said the girl you’d noticed was free-spirited, and lovely and supported you –”

“You are all of those things!”

“You said her name is interesting! Winifred Rose is far more exquisite than plain old Anne.”

“But you’re not plain old Anne,” Gilbert insisted. “You’re Anne with an e.”

“You were embracing –”

“She was comforting me,” Gilbert explained sheepishly, moving closer to the chaise, waiting for Anne to reject his advance. When she didn’t’, he lowered himself onto a small corner of cushion beside her, his hip barely grazing her blanket covered thigh. “I was telling her about the theft, and Mary’s health, and concerns I’m having about the farm and school, and I sort of just, broke down, and Miss Rose was offering a shoulder to cry on.”

Anne stared at Gilbert intently, looking for the merest trace of falsity in his words. All she saw was that same open-eyed, open-hearted expression that graced the young man’s face too often when he was in her company. It was the look that made her believe that Gilbert truly might love her.

“You could have cried on my shoulder,” she muttered at last, crossing her arms with disgruntled fervour and pouting.

“But you weren’t around. In fact, you were supposed to be in Nova Scotia _with_ Cole,” Gilbert pointed out, his tone changing from solemn to serious.

“Are you mad at me?” Anne wondered, finding herself incredibly ashamed of her actions.

“I’m too relieved you’re alright to be mad,” he confessed, running a hand through his curls. “I’m disappointed –”

“That’s worse! Be mad instead, please,” Anne requested, making Gilbert smile.

“Nope, it’s nothing but disappointment, Anne-girl,” he replied, using Aunt Jo’s nickname for her, and making Anne’s heart thrill at hearing him say it; it was as if the moniker was something he should always call her. “You lied.”

“I thought I had to,” Anne admitted, picking at the cuff of her sleeve. “You saw Marilla last Saturday. She wasn’t so keen on me going then, and to tell the truth, she’s actually forbidden me from going again.”

“So, she doesn’t know you’re here? Anne –”

“I know, I feel wretched enough about the lie without your lecturing me about it,” Anne grumbled.

“She must be really worried about you.”

“She thinks I’m in Carmody with Diana’s family until tomorrow evening.”

“Well, guess she’ll be in for a surprise when I get you back to Green Gables tomorrow morning,” Gilbert quipped, offering Anne one of his lopsided grins, a gesture she returned, although her mind was quickly preoccupied with the various punishments she was sure Marilla would conjure up for her, especially when she returned home injured.

She’d be lucky to see anything but Green Gables and the schoolhouse before graduation.

And if she was doomed to being grounded for the next several weeks, the least she could do was be honest with Gilbert when it was unlikely they’d be able to see one another and talk privately for quite some time.

“I’ve noticed you, too, Gil,” she revealed, her voice soft and timid, but her eyes shining with the passionate ferocity Gilbert had noticed and admired since the day she’d slapped her slate upside his head. “I’ve noticed you’re intelligent, witty, occasionally charming. You’re brave, and kind, and patient, with me especially though I don’t know why – but I suppose I do now.”

“I’m serious, Anne,” Gilbert said, sincerity coating his words. “There isn’t anyone else…there never will be, not for me. It’s you.”

“Gilbert, I –” Anne felt herself stutter, unsure how to put the right words in the right order to make him understand. “I can’t – I’m sorry – but it’s just…I’m…I’m not ready. I’m not ready for something so serious as courting. I want to, but right now I simply can’t.”

Anne lowered her head, afraid of seeing the hurt cross Gilbert’s face, knowing what it meant now, how badly she’d injured him over the last three years with her coldness, and how irrefutably she could fracture any hope of a friendship between them, let alone a romance.

“But there’s a chance?” Gilbert asked, his voice soft and full of wonder. Anne caught his lovely hazel stare and realized that the boy beside her wasn’t flinching away, wasn’t demanding she make up her mind, wasn’t crumbling. He was looking at her as if she’s promised him the world, and Anne knew, _she knew_, there was no one else who could ever understand quite as well as Gilbert Blythe.

The sixteen-year old smiled and reached out to touch Gilbert’s face.

“Gilbert, there’s no chance at all,” she said gently, her thumb tracing the lines that crinkled the corners of his eyes as he looked at her with suffering confusion. “You can’t have a chance if there’s no competition. You’re it for me, too. I know that, and maybe that’s why I’ve resisted putting everything into words. Because now it’s real between us, we’ve spoken the deep secrets of our hearts, and that’s scary, Gil.”

“I scare you?” he asked, reaching up to clasp the hand that laid against his skin.

“The way you make me feel scares me,” Anne explained. “Doesn’t it scare you?”

“I suppose,” he admitted. “But it’s also invigorating, to put these feelings into words, to say them to you…to have you say them back. It feels good to know.”

“It does,” Anne agreed. “I’m just sorry that I’m asking you to wait. It’s not a question of reciprocation, but a matter of timing. I need to finish my quest, Gilbert, above all else. Even us.”

“Will it make you happy?”

“You know the answer to that,” she said, and Gilbert thought of the top hat waiting for him at Dr. Ward’s office, smiling sadly even as he sighed in defat.

“Alright,” he agreed, “But promise me something, please? No more lying. And, when you do set out again, bring someone with you. It doesn’t have to be me, but Cole, or Diana, just…please bring someone else. At least that way, if you fall in a ditch –”

“I swear that never happened before today!”

“—there’ll be someone there to help you out.”

And whether that ditch was literal or figurative, Anne realized that she did indeed need the support of her loved ones to help her climb out of the dank pit and back into the light. It really was too treacherous to go it alone, not to mention lonely. Spending a whole day trapped in a ditch could certainly do wonders for one’s perspective on things like personal quests and love.

Resolved to keep Gilbert’s faith in her, Anne lowered her hand from his cheek and rested it between them, raising up her pinky. When Gilbert didn’t move, Anne’s grey-green eyes darted down to her outstretched finger, impatient. Catching on, Gilbert looped his little finger with Anne’s and squeezed.

“I, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, swear that I will not take a single step forward in my quest to uncover my heritage, thus fulfilling a desperate, gnawing need within my soul to understand who I am, without the protection and companionship of a kindred spirit at my side, my kindred spirits being Mathew, Marilla, Ms. Stacy, Aunt Jo, Diana, Cole and you.”

“I’m glad I made the list,” Gilbert quipped.

“You should be. It’s incredibly selective.”

“So, how do we seal this promise?”

“Just shake on it, like so,” Anne instructed, giving their joined hands a solid bob before attempting to let go of the hold, but Gilbert’s pinky remained hooked around hers. Puzzled, Anne looked at him only to get caught up in one of Gilbert’s long, beautiful stares. She understood what that look meant now, and it gave her heart the most delicious thrill.

“Anne, could we maybe, seal this promise in our own way?” he wondered, shy in his approach, but determined to ask all the same.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked, blushing when Gilbert’s hazel eyes shifted rather pointedly down to her parted lips. “Oh...”

Anne and Gilbert leaned across the space that divided them. When their lips touched it was bliss and peace and happiness all rolled into one. Anne sighed into Gilbert’s mouth and he smiled against hers, tasting the lemon from her tea on the very tip of his tongue, which darted out momentarily when he moved to shift his head so that he could recapture Anne’s lips from a new, exhilarating angle.

Anne basked in the kiss, and she treasured each minute she and Gilbert remained so intimately connected. It was a first kiss that blew all others completely out of the water. No novel could ever capture the sheer emotion attached to the tender caress. Words were incapable of reciting the feelings coursing through Anne with each staccato beat of her heart. If she’d thought she was only half-way in love with Gilbert Blythe before, she knew she was helplessly in love with him all the way now.

And he was going to wait for her.

And she would wait for him.

Because there was more to Anne and Gilbert than Anne-and-Gilbert. There was Green Gables and the orchard, Queens, medical school and teaching. There were grooves yet undiscovered in Avonlea, and books unread, and new passions to explore. There were years of growth, and sorrow, and joy, of newborn foals and newborn babies, of sunrises and sunsets, and Saturdays apart as they each pursued the duties that would grant them access to their vocations.

There was a little church somewhere in Bolingbrook that was calling to Anne, the siren song taking her away from Avonlea, and Green Gables, and Gilbert, but only for a little while. Only long enough for Anne’s spirit to find both peace of mind and a missing piece of herself.

Gilbert understood that and, with Anne’s kiss staining his lips as they parted, pinkies still clasped together as if in a lovers’ embrace, he knew that the wait for his Anne-girl would be worthwhile. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, episode two gave me feelings, and apparently super-writing powers because I don't think I've ever typed anything so fast before (except maybe my Master's Thesis the night it was due). 
> 
> Let me just say, I loved episode two, I'm super okay with the direction Anne and Gilbert's characters are going (both apart and together) and I CAN NOT WAIT for this Sunday so I can know what happens next!
> 
> This was a monster of a one-shot, certainly the longest I've ever hammered out, and I hope that you liked it. 
> 
> I'm always really eager to hear your thoughts, so don't be shy about leaving a comment, kudos, or bookmark.
> 
> Here's to more wonderful things (inspiration chief among them) from Season Three of Anne with an E!!!


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